Abstract

The application of computational methods to biological data has transformed modern biological research, enabling researchers to identify complex patterns, uncover trends, infer relationships, and detect anomalies that may not be readily apparent through conventional approaches. This has accelerated the pace of biological discovery and provided deeper insights into the molecular and cellular processes underlying life, health, and disease.

In this talk, I will begin with a brief overview of molecular biology, including the central dogma that describes the flow of genetic information from DNA to RNA and proteins. The diverse types of biological and healthcare data generated through modern technologies, including genomic, transcriptomic, single-cell, clinical, and drug-related data will then be introduced. These large and heterogeneous datasets provide both unprecedented opportunities and significant computational challenges.

The talk will subsequently focus on selected computational methods developed in our group at the Indian Statistical Institute for biological data analysis and healthcare applications. These will include classification-based approaches for predicting microRNA targets, clustering and computational analysis of single-cell RNA sequencing data, and multiobjective optimization approaches for drug design that seek to balance multiple competing objectives. An ongoing work on the analysis and prediction of adverse events arising from polypharmacy, an increasingly important problem in clinical practice, will also be discussed.

The talk will conclude with an overview of emerging trends in the application of artificial intelligence and machine learning to healthcare and biomedical research. Key challenges, including data heterogeneity, interpretability, validation, bias, and privacy, will be highlighted, along with some caveats that need to be considered as AI increasingly becomes part of healthcare and biological discovery.

Biography

Prof. Sanghamitra Bandyopadhyay did her B Tech, M Tech and Ph. D. in Computer Science from Calcutta University, IIT Kharagpur and Indian Statistical Institute respectively. She then joined the Indian Statistical Institute as a faculty member, and became the Director in 2015. After two full tenures as Director of the Indian Statistical Institute from 2015 to 2020 and from 2020 to 2025, Prof. Bandyopadhyay continues as Professor of the Institute. Her research interests include artificial intelligence and machine learning, computational biology, and evolutionary computation and multiobjective optimization. Prof. Bandyopadhyay is the recipient of several awards including the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize in Engineering Science, TWAS Prize, Infosys Prize, Humboldt Fellowship from Germany, Senior Associateship of ICTP, Italy, and Dr. Shanker Dayal Sharma Gold Medal and Institute Silver from IIT, Kharagpur, India. She is a Fellow of all the National Science Academies and the Engineering Academy of India, the IEEE, The World Academy of Sciences (TWAS), and International Association for Pattern Recognition (IAPR). She serves as a member of the Science, Technology and Innovation Advisory Council of the Prime Minister of India (PM-STIAC). In 2022, she was conferred the Padma Shri, the fourth highest civilian award conferred by the Government of India.